


Their Fearless Leader

by mcgarrygirl78



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Romance, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-30
Updated: 2013-06-30
Packaged: 2017-12-16 14:58:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/863318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcgarrygirl78/pseuds/mcgarrygirl78
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was the one burning in hell and she was still there to fight the good fight.  That was as it should be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Their Fearless Leader

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILERS FOR THE BROTHERS HOTCHNER AND THE REPLICATOR! Erin lives in my fanon and she's going to get through this.

“Good afternoon, Erin,” Dr. Nancy Page opened her office door and smiled. “You can come in.”

“Thank you.”

Erin put down the magazine, which she wasn’t reading anyway, and walked into the office. It was very nicely decorated with comfortable furniture and soft lighting. On a rainy afternoon like this one, Erin was sure she might fall asleep on the couch if she had to lie down. She sat down, took a deep breath, and crossed her legs. 

Deciding not to dress like “Strauss” hadn’t been easy. Erin didn’t want to walk through the door in a suit of armor. While she had no intention of giving Dr. Page more than was necessary to be cleared, it seemed like a bad idea to even appear to go on the defensive. She looked like a soccer mom in her dark-rinsed jeans, oversized cable-knit sweater, and her hair pulled back in a ponytail.

“Can I offer you coffee, tea, or something cold to drink?” Nancy asked.

“Tea would be fine. Do you have chamomile?”

“Yes I do.”

The teacup and saucer were both high end. Erin wanted to ask where the doctor got the set but she knew that wasn’t why they were there. There had to be something she could do to break the tension. It wasn’t as if Erin had never been to a psychiatrist before. Still, at the time that was something she did of her own free will. Being forced into this kind of situation, even when you knew it was for the best, wasn’t conducive to the most positive outcome.

“Is it possible for me to smoke in here?” Erin asked. “I don’t mean right at the moment but sometimes when the tension gets to be too much…”

“There’s a smokeless ashtray under the table that doesn’t do much at all.” Nancy smiled as she sat in the chair across from Erin. The table separated them. “I’ll allow you one cigarette. I do the same for all of my patients who smoke.”

“I appreciate it.”

“So you’ve been on leave for two and a half weeks. How does it feel to be back?”

“I'm not back yet. I'm sure the Director is going to make it at least 30 days; it’s the standard. And I also don’t count the half since it was spent in a hospital struggling to survive.”

“Where have you been the past two weeks?” Nancy asked.

“I went away to my husband’s cabin with him and our dog.” Erin replied. “We planned to go away before any of this happened…I wasn’t letting him off that easy. For a change, he didn’t want me to.”

“Were you able to relax?”

“I was.” Erin nodded. “It rained a lot but I still managed to take walks everyday. I read, worked on some furniture that was neglected, had brunches, and spent time quietly contemplating. It was what I wanted. OK, it wasn’t a tour of the Canadian mountains but it was good to be away.”

“What did you quietly contemplate?”

“Everything.”

“Do you care to elaborate, Erin?”

“I'm not entirely sure how.”

“Did you think about John Curtis?” Nancy wasn’t going to get so specific so fast but she only had an hour. 

There was little doubt that Erin Strauss could beat around the bush better than almost anyone who’d sat on that couch. This visit was an assessment. She would determine from it just how many sessions Erin would need before she was cleared to return to work. Erin’s job was stressful. The higher-ups wanted to know if she could still handle it after all she and her unit had been through in the past two years. It had actually been three and a half since most in the Bureau believed the brutal stabbing of Aaron Hotchner and murder of his ex-wife at the hands of an Unsub were when things started going to hell.

“I didn’t have much choice in the matter.”

“How so?”

“He tried to kill me.” Erin held back her disdain for the question as she sipped her tea. Being psychoanalyzed was worse than being profiled. And the idea of being profiled made Erin want to punch things. “Are you going to ask me how I feel about that?”

“Are you going to tell me how you feel?”

“I don’t know how I feel.” She shrugged. “Some person I don’t even know tried to kill me. I didn’t even know his name and yet I consumed his life for the past decade. I don't quite know what to make of it.”

“John Curtis and Alex Blake were on the same team that worked the Amerithrax case in New York.”

“Is that a question?”

“How come you never forgot Alex but John Curtis wasn’t registering on your radar?”

“Alex Blake is more than a dime a dozen FBI Agent.” Erin replied. “She's a brilliant woman with nearly 2 decades of experience. There aren’t a lot of us out there and I definitely appreciated all she had to offer. She would’ve been up for that New York job if she had a cock between her legs. 

“Everything women have in the Bureau we fought tooth and nail for. After the Amerithrax disaster, Alex stayed the course. She worked her ass off to get back where she wanted to be. I completely respect that. She didn’t sit in some dark room contemplating the downfall of someone else because she didn’t get what she wanted.”

“You talk as if you and Alex Blake are friends.” Nancy said. “I've heard things to the contrary.”

“You don’t have to be friends with someone to appreciate how hard they work and how good they are at their jobs.” Erin said. “I'm not friends with Kandinsky but I have two of his paintings in my house.”

“That’s not what I meant exactly.”

“That’s what you said, Dr. Page.”

“So you don’t think John Curtis was worthy of the job in New York?”

“All these years later I really don’t recall what I thought at the time. I was still fighting for my respect as the new Section Chief of the BAU.” Erin said. “Kate Joyner got the job after some others faltered but I didn’t think she was right for it either. She probably got it because she was a woman and the Bureau was trying to play fair.” She used air quotes. “I don’t make the big decisions like that. Though I surely have enough on my plate.”

“Do you think you're ready to handle returning as BAU Section Chief?”

“I've always been able to do my job. I'm not sure if it’s healthy or not but I thrive in stressful environments. There are some things I plan to do differently in the future but I can do this. I've never had any doubt about that.”

“What things do you plan to do differently?” Nancy asked.

“I'm talking about personal things, like spending more time with my family.” Erin said. “If I would’ve died it’s true that I no longer would’ve been BAU Section Chief. But I also would’ve never seen my granddaughter grow up or my son get his Master’s degree. I would’ve never laughed with my mother again or watched my husband and dog argue over bed space. 

“It’s hard to remember that when all the action is going on. I'm sure when bad things happen we all make false promises. We don’t intend them to be false but somehow they turn out to be that way. I want to make it my mission that they’re not.”

“Do you plan to do anything in your work differently?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I can't let what some maniac decides to do make me change anything about my life. He made the decision to hate me, to stalk me and plan my death. He killed others and put so many lives in danger to exact his plan. 

“Changing anything because of him would be ridiculous. He doesn’t even deserve my time and thought. Is he gonna get it, well I'm here aren’t I? As soon as I'm done with this I’ll go right back to not thinking about him.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?” Nancy asked. “Do you think you're repressing what's natural instead of expressing it?”

“I express myself in many ways.” Erin replied. “I get up, get dressed, and go to Quantico every morning. I do my job to the best of my ability. I'm a den mother to a group of people who can drive even a saint crazy and I've never claimed to be a saint. I have to play politics on the regular basis. I have to be a wife, a mother, a child, a grandmother, and when I'm lucky I get to be a friend. I assure you that I'm not repressing anything.”

“So tell me how you feel about John Curtis trying to kill you.”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with me.” Erin said. “He decided to blame me solely for a decision that was made by a group of people and I was handed the job of spelling out. His whole life spiraled out of control and while I don’t think the mistakes made on that case were entirely the fault of the team, someone had to take the blame. Isn’t it easier to blame some woman in power than your brothers in arms? He could’ve directed his anger at Deputy Director Douglas or the Special Agent in Charge of the case, who managed to get off with less than a slap on the wrist. 

“His trigger, most likely, was Alex Blake making it into the BAU because here was another woman surging ahead and how dare her? Not as if Curtis was languishing in some basement. He had been a Unit Chief even if it was in Kansas City, which might not be so glamorous. He had built up enough of a reputation to come back to Washington and slide into a big chair at the DOJ and the intelligence oversight section. 

“He was one of less than a dozen with access to my emails about current BAU cases. Still with all that he never gave up on stewing and planning mayhem to avenge something that happened a decade before. Did he just do all of that, things people could work and fight their entire lives for, just to be close enough to kill someone? He's a meaningless man who led a meaningless life of his own making. Why in the hell should I feel anything for him?”

Erin took another deep breath and drank more of her tea. It was almost time for that cigarette. The truth was she did think about John Curtis. She thought about whether there was anything she could’ve done differently to stop this from happening. She thought about why she didn’t put two and two together sooner since The Replicator and Alex Blake arrived at the same time. 

She thought about those people who died because he didn’t get what he wanted. She thought about the BAU being in danger in their own homes as they were so often out in the field. It wasn’t her fault. That would take some time to sink in and Erin might have to repeat it a million times but she knew it was true. 

John Curtis didn’t wake up one morning as a murdering sociopath. He was just looking for an excuse. The fact that Erin may have unwittingly given him one didn’t mean she had to carry the weight of his acts for the rest of her life. He was the one burning in hell and she was still there to fight the good fight. That was as it should be.

“I'm just glad that I'm still here and he isn’t.” she said. “I'm glad members of the BAU are safe; enough people died because someone wanted to take revenge on me. He wanted to take revenge on us. I want what happened to make things better, not to make them worse.”

“How do you think it’s going to make things better?” Nancy asked.

“I have more cohesion with BAU teams now. Sad that’s how I had to get my so-called street cred but I plan to use it to everyone’s advantage. I think I can make the relationship between the BAU and the higher-ups better as well. I can remind myself just how strong I am; I'm not the kind of woman who’s easy to take down. That will make someone think very hard before trying to do it again…literally or figuratively.”

“And you think you're ready to return to work?”

“Yes.” Erin nodded.

“Do you think you’ll return to the field?” Nancy asked.

“I'm required four times a year to do field assessments. I don’t see that changing. I don’t want it to change. I want all my teams able to rely on me and my experiences in times of crisis, not to think they have to keep things hidden from the bureaucrat who’s never been through what they have.”

“How do you feel about Agent Hotchner and his team in particular?”

“I don’t understand the question.” Erin reached into her purse and pulled out a cigarette case and lighter. She made no attempt to smoke but seemed more comfortable with it in her hand. This hour was almost up. Leave it to the shrink to try to drop the big bombs with seconds on the clock.

“You're married to David Rossi, which is a blatant violation of an oft-ignored rule. You and Aaron Hotchner have clashed in the past, epically, but now mostly seem to work on the same page. You were Derek Morgan’s cheering section when the call for New York Unit Chief came in 2009. You gave presumed-dead Emily Prentiss her job back without question after you gave up God knows what to get Jennifer Jareau back from the DOJ.”

“Doctor it seems as if you already know, or purport to know, how I feel about his team.”

“I want you to tell me how you feel.” Nancy said.

“I feel that these seven people, along with the more than 300 who work in various positions within the BAU, are brave and tireless individuals. They give up holidays, birthdays, friendships, and sometimes even family to get the job done. They save children, adults, and keep terrorists off our shores. And I'm their fearless leader. 

“That’s how I feel. I don’t just want to return to work so that I can say I won. I'm going back for those agents, for the victims, and for the families. I'm going back to fight so that people like John Curtis can't destroy someone else’s life.”

She took a cigarette from the case, slipping it between her lips. Erin lit it and took a deep inhale. The poison felt so good moving through her bloodstream. She’d done good, not over-smoking as could be the norm when things got stressful. Her job had always been stressful but the past three years it had been hellacious. Erin was so glad she could go home and lean on such a good man. They were a great team…holding on to each other to keep from falling over the edge.

“You think you're ready?” Nancy asked as she got up from the chair she was sitting in and went back to her desk.

“I know I am, and it drives me crazy that I don’t get to make the final decision. I guess you can add control freak to my assessment. Not that it’s going to surprise anyone.”

“I'm going to hold you for another two weeks.” The psychiatrist scribbled something in her pad. She wasn’t looking at Erin as she spoke. It was probably for the best since if looks could kill Nancy would be dead on the carpet. “I would like to see you back here next Thursday. We’ll talk again and I’ll send my assessment to your bosses.”

“That’s fine.”

Erin wanted to argue and be difficult but there was no point. It wasn’t going to change a damn thing and might actually be to her detriment. Thirty days was the usual in a case such as hers, not that FBI agents made a habit out of nearly getting themselves killed. It happened, and this was how the Bureau dealt with it. Erin would take the time off; return to New York to see her mother, daughter, and granddaughter. No doubt when she got back to Quantico there would be plenty to do. 

That meant that as much as she didn’t like it, everything would slip into second place after being a Section Chief. This extra time would help to make up for that. Also with Dave back at work Erin would be able to see if she could handle being alone. He couldn’t hover over her forever, which was a damn good thing. She loved him but was ready to smother him in his sleep.

“If there's anything that you need or that may arise before your scheduled appointment, please don’t hesitate to call.”

Nancy got up, walked back across the room, and handed Erin the card. She watched her take a long drag of her cigarette and put it out before reaching for it. Then she slipped it into her purse.

“I'm sure I’ll be alright.” Erin replied.

“Are you sleeping alright? Do you need anything to help with that, or maybe for anxiety?”

“I'm really fine, Dr. Page. I'm not faking it to get a passing grade. Things aren’t perfect but I will be fine.” She stood, put her purse over her shoulder and grabbing her umbrella. “I’ll see you next week. Thank you for your time.”

Erin walked out of the office with her head held high. She made it onto the elevator, down five floors, and into the lobby of the Applewood Medical Center. Walking out into the warm but rainy late afternoon, Erin put up her umbrella and walked to her Beamer. She got in, put the wet umbrella on the passenger seat, and started the ignition. James Taylor was on the radio. 

She covered her face with her hands and cried. It wasn’t the song that made her cry, though _Carolina on my Mind_ was a good one to shed tears on. Sometimes it was so damn hard to be brave all the time. Erin surely wasn’t going to let Nancy Page see her lose it. No, this wasn’t losing it. 

Crying didn’t make you weak, it made you strong. She was in touch with her emotions and right now her emotions wanted to scream. This was more than just John Curtis trying to kill her. Maybe if he just took a bullet, put it into her chest, and she survived, it would be one thing. Instead he violated her space, lied to her, frightened her, forced her to drink, injected her with a deadly drug, and then pushed her out onto a busy street. 

He wanted the team to find her…he wanted them not to be able to save her. But she made it. Even though she didn’t want to, Erin remembered almost every word of her conversation with Aaron Hotchner on that bench. She was frightened and sick and confused. John Curtis did that to her. 

Aaron had to see her like that. So did Dave and Derek Morgan. Erin had nothing for her armor to cover anymore; they'd seen her at her most vulnerable. That was the part she would have to live with. Every time she looked at them they might be seeing that. How would she stop looking like a victim in other’s eyes even long after this ordeal was over?

Her ringing cell phone, attached to the radio in her car, rang loudly and startled Erin. She saw on the radio display that it was Dave. Quickly grabbing some tissues from the console, she cleaned her nose and face before answering. No doubt he would sense something but she hoped not to worry him too much.

“Hey.” Erin cleared her throat.

“I'm not interrupting your trip to the doctor am I?” Dave asked.

“No, that’s over. I actually just got into the car. It’s raining cats and dogs.”

“Are you alright?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to have an early dinner?” he asked.

“I'm really casually dressed.” Erin said.

“Is that a no?”

“No, but I doubt we could go anywhere that would require a reservation.”

“We can go old school.” Dave said. “Remember Murphy’s Pub?”

“Oh my god, David, please don’t tell me that place is still around.” Erin managed a smile.

“It’s still around, it’s still run by the Murphys, and I’ll meet you there at six.”

“You took me there on our first date.”

“It wasn’t a date, remember.” Dave said. “You were implicit on it not being a date.”

“I was kidding myself.” She replied.

“I love you baby.”

“I love you too. I’ll meet you there.”

“That sounds good. You sure you OK?”

“I'm feeling pretty good right now.”

“So I shouldn’t ask you about the crying?” Dave asked.

“I'm hanging up now, David.”

“OK. See you at six.”

Erin ended the call. She pulled down her mirror and looked at her face. Her eyes were red but that was nothing a little Visine couldn’t handle. There were almost two hours until she had to meet Dave in DC. A drive around the countryside would be nice. 

There were roads in Northern Virginia that Erin just loved to drive down. She would crack the windows, put on some Fleetwood Mac or Van Morrison, and just let go. By the time she got to Murphy’s Erin hoped to feel more like herself again.

***


End file.
